AIRTAG intros NFC / contactless development kit, geeks celebrate

As fantastical as NFC and contactless applications are, they're still relatively unknown in the grand scheme of things here on this side of the drink. Thankfully, AIRTAG is stepping up in hopes of giving us Earthlings (and by that, we mean North Americans) a few more options. The conceitedly-named AIRTAG KIT is hailed as an "NFC development kit for end-users, professionals and developers" that will enable them to "program tags to NFC standards, to communicate with all NFC mobile phones and to develop secured applications compliant with the industry standards." It's still hard to say how many devs will shell out €249 ($344) for the privilege of expanding the protocol, but at least it's out there for those who get curious.

[Magallanes @ Oct 3rd 2008 2:51PM]

what?

[chefgon_ign @ Oct 3rd 2008 2:59PM]

Maybe some explanation of what the heck this is would have been a useful addition to this post.

[Chad @ Oct 3rd 2008 3:07PM]

Isn't it a little late in the Century to be doing dev on the Nintendo Famicom Console?

[Chad @ Oct 3rd 2008 3:10PM]

This should help

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_Field_Communication

[Magallanes @ Oct 3rd 2008 4:17PM]

Thanks, so it is some sort of bluetooth evil twin (or bt is the evil?).

[Chad @ Oct 3rd 2008 4:25PM]

It's so you can walk up to the vending machine and wave your phone at it and it will give you candy (or soda, or that six week old tuna sandwich). Of course your bank account will be smaller for it.

[Valicore @ Oct 3rd 2008 4:33PM]

Great, this will increase the average debt per person to about 5 trilligagillion dollars. "I didn't just buy that $13 can of soda, I just got lucky while I was texting and it gave me one! Wait... what do you mean I have a negative balance?"

[teej @ Oct 3rd 2008 4:10PM]

i wonder how the AFC will take these developments

[Jimbo @ Oct 3rd 2008 4:40PM]

Wait a minute, what part of that title do I understand?

[Muhammad-Oli @ Oct 3rd 2008 7:28PM]

I looked at that box and thought cigarettes. Nice package design.....

[Jamar @ Oct 5th 2008 7:16AM]

So... will this be compatible with existing NFC systems (FeliCa, for instance)?

[Yannick @ Oct 6th 2008 6:24AM]

Yes, it's compatible with Felica and all others (Mifare, ISO15693, ...)
You'll find more info on www.airtag.com and www.airtagkit.com ...